Genius Architecture

Architecture Philosophy

Jeeves was founded in 1992 on the idea that no two businesses are alike—and that software should celebrate and automate the processes and workflows that differentiate one company from the next. We knew the core problems facing most ERP system users: either they were changing their business in order to use their software (losing sight of their original vision while wasting time on process workarounds and workflow mismatches), or they were changing their software to preserve their business processes (throwing money at upgrades and customizations both new and old).

We knew there had to be a better way—we needed to solve these problems and, at the same time, deliver a lower total cost of ownership to end users. So we set out to design an ERP software solution that could deliver easily-built, highly-custom implementations that that were also easy to upgrade. We wanted to build an ERP software solution that would allow companies to implement their chosen business strategies and allow them to be different. We envisioned an ERP software solution that would be easy to modify to help companies grow, adapt to changing market conditions, and better serve their customers.

The Jeeves ERP genius architecture is the result of our desire to solve these real problems with the ERP market. Our architecture is ”genius” not only in the way that it’s technically built, but also in the way that it offers undeniable value to our customers.

The Architectural Evolution

The many definitions of the word architecture describe the process and result of planning, designing and building physical structures. We study the architecture behind buildings and cities as works of art that can be classified into categories of similar style and approach.

Software architecture is no different. Architecture is responsible for software usability, flexibility, and longevity. And, just as with buildings, software architectures can be categorized and classified. Historically, we can trace different software architecture styles according to the core problem-solving ideas behind different ERP systems, including their advantages and limitations:

Best Practice Systems

Many of the ERP systems available today are rooted in their evolution from the demands of the very first customer to those of the next customer, and so on and so forth. More often than not, these architectures are the accidental backbones of on-premise systems built to fit a handful of companies—but that end up being used by many companies. And more often than not, these architectures are plagued by rigid databases and older technology that are difficult to evolve over time. Changes in one area of the system often have deep consequences elsewhere in the system. Systems of this type, modeled on a small core of companies, are generally referred to as “best practice” systems, since they implement the practices of a selected group of companies. Unfortunately, these systems rapidly become difficult to change and require you to change your processes to follow those of the original group of companies. Customers coming from these systems beg for the ability to make easy customizations to support their competitive differentiators.

Configurable Systems

Next came the 10,000-switch gorilla, a popular architectural direction during the 1990’s, led most famously by SAP. These systems were built to meet the needs not of a few select companies, but of every company, no matter what industry they worked in. Every possible requirement was included in the code base, and all you had to do was “configure” the system. After customers select from the thousands of parameters and data views available to them, they then embark upon a tedious and lengthy custom development process. Implementations tend to be long and complex, made that way by installing, sorting through, configuring, and testing massive amounts of code. And, just like prior systems, the 10,000-switch architectures are difficult to evolve and test. As a result, they became nearly impossible to upgrade without a full reimplementation. Customers of these systems rapidly become frustrated with their aging technology, the cost of ownership, and the massive cost to upgrade.

Multi-Tenant SaaS

In the 2000’s, the backlash from these types of systems sent vendors running in the opposite direction. Leaving the idea of highly custom, costly systems, software vendors went back to the idea of simplicity, where everyone shares the same system, database, and infrastructure with minimal configuration. Essentially shrink-wrapped software running in the cloud. Customers essentially had state-of-the-art technology at a lower cost, but they were back to their original problem: they owned a generic system that didn’t fit anyone and was also difficult to customize. Even worse, customers don’t even have a fully defined “best practice” system. They now have a “lowest common denominator” system with no way to differentiate themselves or handle their advanced business functions. Users of these systems quickly learned that the pain of not being able to even customize your system is the worst pain of all.

Is there an architecture that is as cost-effective and technology-proof as a SaaS solution but still allows for customization? An architecture that allows companies the ability to protect their unique business processes without thousands of hours of effort? An architecture that doesn’t create a barrier to continuous improvement as companies grow and change? An architecture that is capable of adapting as technology evolves?

Enter the Model-Driven Architecture – this is what makes the Jeeves ERP architecture so “genius.”

Model-Driven Architecture

Model-driven architectures are built on technical models that describe how software works and business models that describe what the software should do. Model-driven architectures produce flexible systems built for modification and change. The architecture allows new logic and data behaviors to be added at any time. Old logic and behaviors remain functional even when the underlying system logic is upgraded. Model-driven architectures start from the premise that you will tell the system what you want done and the system will do just that. Not someone else’s best practice—but your best practice. Not 10,000 options—just the options you want. And certainly not the lowest common denominator in the industry. What you want, the way you want it, fast and easy.

The Architectural Revolution

Unlike earlier ERP systems where every aspect of the product is hard-coded and difficult to adapt or change, the Jeeves ERP system architecture is model-based. A developer defines the way the product should look and feel and that model is used to control the operation of the system. Not only is the customer data unique to each customer implementation, but the look and feel of the product and the content of every page is unique as well.

The Jeeves ERP system carries a Site Repository where all of the customer-specific implementation details are stored. When the core application is upgraded, these changes are retained, and the product continues to operate as specified in the Site Repository. Customers can easily create a truly unique ERP solution that preserves their ability to change and upgrade their system over time. The idea is simple: describe the desired system, rather than hard-code it, and keep this description separate from the core system.

Key Benefits

Let's explore some of the key benefits of Jeeves ERP's genius architecture.

Run-Time Flexibility

Some model-driven architectures implement the model by regenerating the code that implements the system. The Jeeves ERP architecture maintains its model as a critical element of the system. The model is used and executed at run time so that changes and enhancements and upgrades can all be done with a minimum amount of disruption to the run-time system.

Upgrade New Functionality Alongside Modifications

The Jeeves ERP architecture separates the model for the standard system from the model for the customizations, so that customers can keep their adaptations, while continuing to take advantage of newly released, standard functionality.

Zero Upgrade Force (ZUF)

In code-based systems, adaptations must be manually transferred from the old version to the new version and then adjusted based on new features or dependency changes. With Jeeves ERP, the core system is upgraded around the customizations. This means that customers can upgrade on their own terms and pace with significantly less effort. More than 80 percent of Jeeves customers upgrade to the next version within two years of its release—and that’s a decision they make. We stand by this unbeatable statistic in the ERP industry.

High-Efficiency Development

The Jeeves model-based development environment is very efficient and productive. Programming is kept to a minimum, allowing Jeeves to quickly release new functionality, and allowing customers, as well as partners, to rapidly release new functionality as well. Significant changes can often be made in a matter of minutes.

Available Anywhere

The Jeeves architecture easily supports ubiquitous connectivity, and by that, we mean more than just accessing the application in the cloud on a Web browser from a mobile device. Jeeves ERP has very effective client-server communication system that allows the application to be used in networks with narrow bandwidth, outside local networks, or by companies with a geographically dispersed organization.

Collaboration and New Feature Time-To-Market

The Jeeves Application Builder (JAB) allows customers to quickly and easily share functionality between installations, allowing them to import and export settings in applications, report templates, or new programs as an “app.” Apps can also be shared between different Jeeves environments via the JAB, allowing you to collaborate with Jeeves, our partners, or other customers to solve problems and further extend your system—or to automate the process of moving customizations from development to test to production. This provides for a much shorter outage window during deployments into production and eliminates human error.

The Jeeves Component Framework

There are many components that make up the Jeeves ERP genius architecture. This section will define and explain each component.

Jeeves Application Development Environment (JADE) (DevDB)

The Jeeves Application Development Environment (JADE) is a model-driven development environment for ERP applications, with support for declarative and programmable development. JADE can create working applications with all standard Jeeves features without writing a single line of code. Or complex features can be developed by hand and integrated into the code base. Either way, with JADE, it is possible to quickly and efficiently define, extend, and maintain Jeeves ERP.

Jeeves Metadata Model

Jeeves Metadata Model is a description of all model objects, including data types, terms, columns, tables, relationships, programs, and reports. The Metadata Model makes it possible to extend Jeeves ERP in run time with extended data-, program-, and execution- models, making it possible to apply customizations in run time from the Jeeves Site Repository. The Jeeves Metadata Model separates the standard system from adaptations, enabling high efficiency development and customizations atop an upgradable standard system.

Jeeves Server

The Jeeves Server is used to host the logic tier of the Jeeves application. It manages the user interaction and integration logic and enables the server to be accessed from the user interface tier. It is the framework dedicated to create efficient execution of macros, events programs and more. The Jeeves server is the engine that manage all types of events, building applications by merging model data with transaction data as the application runs. It handles all database access and all other Jeeves services. The Jeeves Server also handles both types of clients, the Jeeves Classic Client and the Jeeves Web Client, known as Jeeves Insight.

Jeeves Database

Implemented in Microsoft SQL Server, the Jeeves Database is a relational database with high-performance data storage and logic applied via in stored procedures and triggers. The database stores all the business data, provides transaction handling, and keeps data integrity. Triggers and procedures ensure all business rules are always applied, regardless of the source of the transaction, in addition to supporting web services. The implementation of the Jeeves Database provides a flexible and extendible platform that will support your business today and tomorrow. As businesses grow and change, the Jeeves Database can be extended with columns, tables, new procedures, and extensions of existing procedures that are maintained through every upgrade. The Jeeves Database also enforces custom business rules, independent of the source of database access.

Jeeves Site Repository

The Jeeves Site Repository is a storage database for customizations, storing the customizations, the added model data, and settings. The Site Repository is a description of the desired alterations of the system. It stores:

Altered appearance due to styles, colors, fonts, font sizes, and field positions.

Altered or added text such as form and tab names, field names, and changed or added tables, terms, etc.

Handling of end user roles, including the connection of users to roles.

Customized user interactions along with customized navigation and validation logic.

The Site Repository is multi-layered so it is possible to have sets of changes applied and prioritized. The Site Repository is the cornerstone of the Jeeves ERP genius architecture that allows customizations to be separated from the standard functionality and achieves its promise of zero forced upgrades.

Jeeves Control Server

The Jeeves Control Sever is a surveillance tool that runs the Jeeves Server. In other words, it’s a super server that monitors the Jeeves foundation and user sessions, and makes sure it is healthy. The Jeeves Control Sever makes it easy to administrate several Jeeves servers to support growth and scalability over time, as well as execute upgrades and proactively administer the system based on rules and other scheduled actions.

Jeeves Client Broker

The Jeeves Client Broker connects the clients with servers, acting as a broker for client sessions. Jeeves Client Broker manages the traffic against Jeeves and provides load balancing on the Jeeves Servers. It also manages server call back to the client and secures a connection between the Jeeves Server and the Jeeves Client over the internet. The Jeeves Client Broker functions as a middle tier for internet access through firewalls. With the Jeeves Client Broker, it is possible to handle multiple connection methods with or without a VPN.

Jeeves Standard Client

The Jeeves Standard Client provides a rich user interface that can be easily customized and personalized without making any changes to the client itself. The model simply tells the server how the client should look and the forms are generated as defined. You can easily add fields, build forms, construct process workflows, write macros, and design reports using a limited number of IT resources rather than contracting for full-time application support or services engagements that are normally required. The Jeeves client also easily integrates with other client-side software, such as Microsoft Office, web browser bookmarks, .NET programs, PDF-viewer, COM-objects, ActiveX Controls, and more. It also provides services for output reports and file formats. The design of the Jeeves Client enables efficient and secure communication via the internet. It is easily implemented and provides an excellent search tool. The Jeeves Client works well in all type of networks, including WAN, LAN, mobile, and wireless. It is also resilient to network disturbances and reconnects where it left off.

Jeeves Web Client

Jeeves Insight is Jeeves ERP’s new, browser-based client that was designed to be used on both PCs and MACs. Jeeves Insight is the next-generation user interface for Jeeves ERP, and it can be run in a browser while providing a rich client user experience. Jeeves Insight’s role-based user interface can hide irrelevant information and enhance features that are important to a particular role, including program design, available reports, dashboard pages, program menus, and much more.

Jeeves Message Integrator

Jeeves Message Integrator (JMI) is a framework that permits asynchronous message integration and batch integration with Jeeves. With Jeeves Message Integrator, you can map data into and out of XML messages, as well as make SQL calls. The framework provides a mapping tool, transaction handler, message queues, and exception management. Jeeves Message Integrator is the preferred way to integrate asynchronously to Jeeves ERP. Jeeves Message Integrator provides a single access system from all applications using XML messages. Traditional integrations are based on one table per message. The JMI allows for the easy setup and configuration of the parallel processing of messages and is proven to handle large volumes of transactions.

Jeeves Service Gateway

The Jeeves Service Gateway provides computer-to-computer access to the Jeeves Server and is used for integrations to almost any external system or platform. The Jeeves Service Gateway provides a modular, plug-in based interface for technologies such as Java, web services, more. The Jeeves Service Gateway exposes all the logic in the Jeeves Client and Jeeves Database, including your customizations. This makes system-to-system integrations simpler and more cost-effective.

Jeeves Services Builder

The Jeeves Service Builder (JSB) is an information gateway that provides a single point of access to different information resources. Information can be retrieved, created, modified, or deleted. JSB is not an integration server; it dynamically creates endpoints that can be used by integration servers to connect to Jeeves ERP. Jeeves Service Builder combines with the Jeeves Message Integrator and the Jeeves Database to create the foundation for Jeeves ERP’s Service Oriented Architecture.

2Bsystem

2Bsystem is a Jeeves ERP solution partner, and offers ERP solutions and services to midmarket businesses primarily in the food industry, including fruits and vegetables, meat products, and products of the sea. Based in Rungis, 2Bsystem focuses on providing local, personalized product and IT support and solution expertise, with services that span hardware, applications, integrations, project management, hotline support, and training. For more information, visit www.2bsystem.fr.

ERP Factory

Based in Paris, France, ERP Factory is a reseller and systems integrator of ERP, CRM and BI solutions for midmarket businesses. With deep product and industry expertise, ERP Factory works directly with its customers to help them with their ERP and IT initiatives. ERP Factory is a Jeeves ERP solution partner, and also supports two important Jeeves ERP add-on products, including Microsoft Dynamics CRM and QlikView Business Intelligence (BI). From consulting and implementation services to product support and audits, ERP Factory helps companies fully leverage their business systems. For more information, visit www.ERPfactory.fr.

S.A.S Greenspark

Greenspark is a Jeeves ERP solution partner, offering implementation and consulting services, as well as product support. For more information, visit www.greenspark.fr or email contact@greenspark.fr.

Education

At Jeeves, we believe that education is integral to the full lifespan of your Jeeves implementation, and we understand how important a well-informed, knowledgeable employee is to the success of your business. To help you deliver ongoing training and education to both new and existing system users, Jeeves offers a variety of education and training options.

Visit our events page to see a schedule of upcoming product-focused webinars and seminars. There, you’ll also have access to recorded webinars.

As part of the Jeeves support agreement, customers have unlimited access to an in-depth training curriculum via a customer portal, where both scheduled and on-demand courses are available to all types of users, from beginner to power user. Courses are designed to be taken in small increments of time, minimizing time away from the job and eliminating travel expenses.

Should you have the need for custom or on-site training, perhaps to prepare for an upgrade or develop your advanced power users, the Jeeves education team can offer personalized assistance in developing a training plan, as well as prepare and deliver the material. Personalized training is billed at an hourly rate.

Support

We know you depend your ERP solution to keep your operations running smoothly and your customers happy. That’s why we’ve assembled a talented and experienced team of product experts to provide you with support and ensure you’re leveraging your system to its fullest. Each Jeeves support analyst has an average of more than 12 years of direct product experience and more than 10 years of experience serving in a technical product support role.

Our support team loves what they do, and most of all, they enjoy helping our customers solve problems. Said one of our analysts: “I love helping our customers solve problems—especially when I can give them that ‘aha’ moment—usually by displaying a feature they may not be using in their current situation.”

Our support team is also incredibly passionate about the products they support. Another one of our analysts commented, “I love the product. I fell in love with it the first day I saw it. It has endless possibilities.”

Jeeves product support is powered by Jeeves’ world-class support system, allowing customers to submit questions, defects, product ideas and service requests via the phone, email or the Jeeves customer portal. Responses and resolutions are delivered within the hours of operation of Jeeves customer support: Monday-Friday 08:00 – 17:00 CET.

After hours, customers have 24/7 access to the customer portal, where they can track their case status and history, query the self-service knowledgebase, explore on-demand education and training, and access product documentation and news.

Contact Support

How can we help you?

Jeeves ERP Customers

Beyond Product Support

At Jeeves, we put our customers first, and you can see it in every aspect of the business. Outside of support, you’ll find all of our departments working in concert to address your ongoing solution improvement needs:

Our product management team builds product feedback channels into every stage of the product development process to ensure that our solutions are 100 percent customer driven and approved.

Our education team builds high-value education offerings to empower every level of user, from novice to veteran.

Our marketing team hosts an education- and networking-centric user and partner conference, as well as regular industry best practice and educational product webinars. The Jeeves marketing team also is dedicated to ensuring that you receive product- and company-related information via customer emails and newsletters.

Our engineers handle escalations on support requests; release patches to address urgent customer needs and quality assurance; build documentation and product manuals; and develop the new features customers are asking for.

Our tenured product and industry consultants are available to provide a number of consulting services to meet your unique needs.

Our account management team is always available to guide you in getting the products, resources, services and assistance you need, fast. As your central point of contact, your account manager will work with you via regular strategic account planning sessions.

Prepackaged Consulting Services

Sometimes, built-in, best-practice processes can be valuable—and ideal for the company seeking to build processes from scratch, or improve on poorly performing processes. For accelerated implementations, Jeeves offers prepackaged consulting services. These services are based on pre-built configurations of our solutions, with a set number of services hours to fit the solution to your environment.

Business Intelligence

Many companies, regardless of what industry they’re in, have a similar set of problems when it comes to analysis and reporting. First, their daily visibility and decision-making are guided by static reports—reports that often require time and expense to modify when new questions are asked. Second, many reports are often showing an incomplete set of data, usually because the full picture requires an integration of data from multiple sources and proprietary systems. Last, companies that have done a good job of tracking data over time have begun to face the complexities associated with analyzing large volumes of data over time—without crashing their antiquated OLAP cubes.

With the Jeeves Business Intelligence (BI) application area, powered by QlikView, you gain an adaptable analysis and decision support system, which either can be run as an integrated part of Jeeves ERP or stand-alone in a web browser or mobile interface. QlikView’s in-memory associative search technology allows users to freely explore information from multiple sources, rather than being confined to a predefined path of questions, as well as quickly and easily analyze large volumes of historical data.

Like the core Jeeves ERP solution, Jeeves BI is easy to adapt and use, and doesn’t require extensive hand-holding from your IT staff in order to build long-awaited reports. Jeeves BI includes a pre-defined data model; pre-defined line-of-business-based reports; a set of robust, line-of-business-based BI apps; as well as application-specific features like validation tables. Once in the Jeeves BI app, you use its intuitive clickable interface to query data and drill down to transaction-level data. Data is aggregated with dashboard-like, smart graphics that are easily modified, as well as easily validated with functions like export-to-Excel. As you work with your Jeeves ERP data, you will quickly see how easy it is to add filters and dimensions to your queries, or even integrate data from another disparate system. You also can analyze data and trends with colleagues using the system’s unique collaboration features.

Key Features

Jeeves BI Bundles

The Jeeves BI bundles are embedded into your Jeeves ERP solution as part of the core product. While these predefined, line-of-business-based reports are built using the QlikView platform, they are static reports that cannot be modified. These reports use data for the past 24 months and come with a standard set of filters. There are embedded BI tabs for the following functional areas: sales, accounts receivable, accounts payable, purchasing, warehouse, supply chain, service, projects, production, shop floor, and opportunities.

Jeeves BI Apps

The Jeeves BI apps are standalone apps, developed by either Jeeves or one of its partners, that are available for purchase and require a licensed QlikView server. When you purchase a Jeeves BI app, you can fully leverage the QlikView technology, including the ability to modify reports and dashboards, look at larger blocks of data, drill down to single transactions, export to Excel, and more.

The Jeeves BI apps allows you to identify the key measurements and performance indicators for your line-of-business operations and monitor them. There are Jeeves BI apps for the following functional areas: sales, opportunities, financials, warehouse, purchasing, and production. Each area includes pre-packaged analyses, as well as the ability for you to modify and expand them using your own filters, queries, and data display preferences.

Mobility

Jeeves BI, powered by QlikView, is accessible from any tablet or smartphone. Now, you and your team can have ubiquitous connectivity to your enterprise data in order to confidently make decisions—whenever and wherever they need to be made.

Customer Relationship Management

The Jeeves CRM application area provides all the standard CRM functionality typically needed by manufacturing, wholesale and service companies that require a 360-degree view of their interactions with customers, prospective buyers, trading partners, and other constituencies. With functionality that spans contact management, campaign management, lead management, opportunity management, sales forecasting, pipeline reporting and more, Jeeves CRM will help you build customer loyalty while driving sales revenue. Jeeves CRM also is deeply integrated with the core system, allowing you to link your processes to critical transactional data, including open orders, accounts receivable, service orders, and much more.

The Jeeves ERP system is built on a world-class architecture that separates core feature sets from the unique workflows, processes, forms, fields and reports you design. As a result, your sales and marketing approach can support all types of customers, including both domestic and international, customers with another payer, customers with multiple points of delivery, and more. In addition, there are endless possibilities for the segmentation and classification of your customer data. You can assimilate limitless fields and keywords to generate the gradual and graphical build-up of information about your customer relationships, as well as handle the workflow-specific reporting of key activities, such as sales follow-up calls for recurring revenue streams. What’s more, all the information in Jeeves CRM benefits from a unique search ability, allowing you to search on any field or data point to quickly answer questions when working directly with one of your clients.

Key Features

Company and Contact Management

The Jeeves CRM application area allows you to track and manage company and contact information. The system allows you to easily distinguish prospective customers from existing ones, and carriers from suppliers. For each company, you can manage the language of item names, units, payment terms, delivery terms, and delivery methods, as well as print external documents in the customer's language. Contact records can be linked to a company at any time. As with company records, contacts can be classified based on whatever statuses and fields you choose, as well as easily linked to workflows, such as a button that kicks off a direct email from within the system.

Sales Process Management

Every company’s sales team follows a unique sales process underpinned by proven sales methodologies. With Jeeves CRM, you can automate and track the critical points of your sales process, time-stamping status changes or kicking off approval workflows so that your sales revenue becomes as predictable as possible.

Opportunity Management

Your sales team can easily associate sales opportunities with companies and contacts to help your management team get a better grasp of your sales pipeline. Opportunities can be linked to marketing activities and campaigns so that you can better understand marketing effectiveness. Statuses and fields allow you to track key opportunity data, such as win/loss and reason codes. You also can choose at what point your opportunities will feed into sales forecasting reports.

Sales Reporting

Jeeves CRM supports limitless reporting capabilities, allowing you to monitor the performance metrics that matter most to your business. Forecasting can be looked at by rep to assess performance to quota, or at the company level to predict probable sales revenue and margins. In the pipeline analysis node, you can see a graphical view of all active opportunities, and a sum of potential revenue by sales phase. In the future income node, you can look ahead to future years and plan revenue based on your existing opportunities, grouped by either period or quarter. The Jeeves CRM module also integrates with the Jeeves business intelligence (BI) application for further insight on your sales and marketing performance.

Outlook Integration

You’ll rarely meet a sales rep who doesn’t manage his day within his personal Outlook calendar. Whether they are on the road visiting customers or managing back-to-back calls and meetings, your sales team members can rely on seeing all of their CRM activities, including details about the customer, quotation, opportunity and contact person, in Outlook.

Activity Reporting

From outbound telemarketing to inbound lead follow up, there are many activities across sales and marketing that are critical to ensure your revenue targets are met. With the Jeeves CRM module, you can track activities, as well as link them directly to companies, contacts or opportunities.

Lead Management

Your marketing team can manage leads as responses, through checklists of standard responses and links to activities, or as part of opportunity management. Statuses and fields you choose will help you gain a better understanding of the top of your sales funnel, as well as help to evaluate which campaigns and offers are working best.

Campaign Management

Jeeves CRM provides support for campaign management, allowing you to build distribution lists for companies and contacts based on any field or data point, from industry classification codes to the response entered for a previous campaign. Lists can be easily copied for reuse and modification, or even manually built. Once the distribution list is built, and companies and contacts assigned to a campaign, marketers can send targeted email communications to the list, fueled by the most up-to-date recipient contact information. Via the Jeeves document management integration, brochures and datasheets can be linked to the email as an attachment. When the campaign is sent, you can generate activities for the salesperson responsible for a campaign recipient, and track the follow up and results.

Competitor Monitoring

You can record and monitor competitive intelligence within the Jeeves CRM module, using fields and forms that display everything from a SWOT analysis to product assortment to financial performance. Win/loss data from your opportunities against this competitor can be linked, along with information on the key factors that led to the outcome of the deal.

Key Customer Data and Documents

Jeeves CRM is fully integrated with all other application areas in the Jeeves ERP system, so you can easily link to key customer data, such as orders, invoices or open service engagements, to give every customer-facing employee a real-time view of the customer at every touch point. The module’s deep integration with the Jeeves document management application ensures that your sales personnel are always using the most up-to-date product information, marketing collateral, and business templates, such as sales letters, contracts or quotes.

Additive Solutions

Jeeves offers a variety of additive solutions that will further align the system to your unique business processes, including integrations with third party products, add-on products, and custom solutions fueled by our Apps Builder Toolkit. Jeeves ERP’s genius architecture separates any type of additive solution from the core system, so that you can carry them forward through every upgrade. What’s more, whether you develop custom functionality yourself or engage our product, industry and process experts to build it for you, our apps-driven development cycle will allows you to quickly deploy additive solutions. Explore some of the additive solutions our customers have implemented alongside our core CRM functionality below:

Microsoft Dynamics CRM

For companies with a need for more robust CRM functionality, Jeeves offers the Microsoft Dynamics CRM solution. As a reseller, Jeeves offers a pre-built integration between Microsoft Dynamics CRM and the core Jeeves ERP system, supported by implementation and consulting services that will help further align the solution to your unique way of managing customer relationships—no matter how complex it seems.

Business Intelligence

Jeeves Business Intelligence (BI) is an adaptable analysis and decision support system, powered by QlikView, which either can be run as an integrated part of Jeeves ERP or stand-alone in a web browser or mobile interface. Whether you use a packaged sales or opportunity intelligence dashboard or build your own custom reports, QlikView’s in-memory associative search technology allows you to freely explore information from multiple sources, rather than being confined to a predefined path of questions. With Jeeves BI, you can identify the key measurements and performance indicators for your sales operations and monitor them. For example, understand what is driving sales performance with invoice statistics; view the order backlog by analyzing the current quantity, value and age of order stock; or identify profitable and unprofitable customers and products by looking at turnover compared to margins and credit times. On the opportunity side, you can actively monitor your sales pipeline, project future income, and follow key sales activities and processes.

Jeeves BI is a pre-packaged business intelligence system that converts transactions within different parts of your Jeeves ERP system into searchable graphics and dashboards. With Jeeves BI, you can get an overview of all your business functions, including sales, purchasing, inventory, manufacturing and finance—and from there, you have the ability to drill down into the details to ask the next question.

The core Jeeves ERP solution is broken down into eight application areas, augmented by powerful enterprise features and extended by additive solutions and integrations. Each application area represents the feature depth you can expect from an ERP solution with a 20-year history of research and development.

Sales and Customer Service

The Jeeves Sales and Customer Service application area is built around highly flexible sales order management functionality that can accommodate any type of manufacturing, distribution, and/or service business. The module is able to handle manufacturing environments from make-to-stock to make-to-order, distribution channels from direct-from-inventory to direct-from-suppliers, and business complexity from single sites to multiple locations worldwide. The module is deeply integrated with the core system allowing you to link your customer-facing processes and interactions to critical transactional data, including open orders, accounts receivable, service orders, and much more.

The Jeeves Sales and Customer Service module comes with predefined processes, roles, menus and forms that can be easily aligned to your existing sales organization and process. Customers can be easily segmented into various categories for posting control, statistics, discount management and more. You also can categorize your products in any way—putting them into accounts, classes or groups at the product or line item level. Likewise, pricing and other classifications are available for each product and item, with options for language, units, payment terms, delivery terms, delivery methods, currency clauses, and more. When it’s time to sell something, your sales team will have a real-time view of what is available to sell and what is not—including product variants and seasonal products, as well as automated pricing based on negotiated quotes, price lists, tax calculations, and discounts.

Key Features

Available-To-Promise

Your sales and customer service reps have complete visibility into product and item availability across your entire supply chain, including multiple warehouses. The Jeeves available to promise feature considers shortages, necessary purchases and manufacturing orders, planned receipts and dispatches, and item lead times. With Jeeves, you can rest assured that when an order is being created, your customers will be able to trust your promised delivery date.

Estimator

The Jeeves ERP estimator tool is a light sales configurator that allows you to select materials and routings, as well as service and maintenance delivery, for either standard or customized, make-to-order products. The estimate provides sales personnel with a 360-degree view of the business, including a profit/loss check, helping them more efficiently move to the quote phase.

Quotations

Handle a broad range of requirements for pricing agreements and discount management, from tiered pricing to complex discount matrices. When your customer is ready to buy, quotations can then be quickly converted to orders. You also can brand and adjust standard quotations on the fly, as well as connect them to mailing contacts, lists or campaigns.

Claims

Enter and log customer claims, including remarks about items, orders and invoices, and record how they are to be settled as well as actions to be taken. You can define different workflows for different types of claims, specify the data required for scheduling, and control how activities should be reported.

Company and Contact Management

Track and manage company and contact information. The system allows you to easily distinguish prospective customers from existing ones, and carriers from suppliers. For each company, you can manage the language of item names, units, payment terms, delivery terms, and delivery methods, as well as print external documents in the customer's language. Contact records can be linked to a company at any time. As with company records, contacts can be classified based on whatever statuses and fields you choose, as well as easily linked to workflows, such as a button that kicks off a direct email from within the system.

Sales Process Management

Every company’s sales team follows a unique sales process underpinned by proven sales methodologies. With the Jeeves Sales and Customer Service module, you can automate and track the critical points of your sales process, time-stamping status changes or kicking off approval workflows so that your sales revenue becomes as predictable as possible.

Opportunity Management

Your sales team can easily associate sales opportunities with companies and contacts to help your management team get a better grasp of your sales pipeline. Opportunities can be linked to marketing activities and campaigns so that you can better understand marketing effectiveness. Statuses and fields allow you to track key opportunity data, such as win/loss and reason codes. You also can choose at what point your opportunities will feed into sales forecasting reports.

Sales Reporting

Monitor the performance metrics that matter most to your business. Forecasting can be looked at by rep to assess performance to quota, or at the company level to predict probable sales revenue and margins. In the pipeline analysis node, you can see a graphical view of all active opportunities, and a sum of potential revenue by sales phase. In the future income node, you can look ahead to future years and plan revenue based on your existing opportunities, grouped by either period or quarter.

Outlook Integration

You’ll rarely meet a sales rep who doesn’t manage his day within his personal Outlook calendar. Whether they are on the road visiting customers or managing back-to-back calls and meetings, your sales team members can rely on seeing all of their CRM activities, including details about the customer, quotation, opportunity and contact person, in Outlook.

Activity Reporting

From outbound telemarketing to inbound lead follow up, there are many activities across sales and marketing that are critical to ensure your revenue targets are met. With the Jeeves Sales and Customer Service module, you can track activities, as well as link them directly to companies, contacts or opportunities.

Lead Management

Your marketing team can manage leads as responses, through checklists of standard responses and links to activities, or as part of opportunity management. Statuses and fields you choose will help you gain a better understanding of the top of your sales funnel, as well as help to evaluate which campaigns and offers are working best.

Campaign Management

The Jeeves Sales and Customer Service module provides support for campaign management, allowing you to build distribution lists for companies and contacts based on any field or data point, from industry classification codes to the response entered for a previous campaign. Lists can be easily copied for reuse and modification, or even manually built. Once the distribution list is built, and companies and contacts assigned to a campaign, marketers can send targeted email communications to the list, fueled by the most up-to-date recipient contact information. When the campaign is sent, you can generate activities for the salesperson responsible for a campaign recipient, and track the follow up and results.

Competitor Monitoring

You can record and monitor competitive intelligence using fields and forms that display everything from a SWOT analysis to product assortment to financial performance. Win/loss data from your opportunities against this competitor can be linked, along with information on the key factors that led to the outcome of the deal.

Key Customer Data and Documents

The Jeeves Sales and Customer Service module is fully integrated with all other application areas in the Jeeves ERP system, so you can easily link to key customer data, such as orders, invoices or open service engagements. The module’s deep integration with the Jeeves document management [MS2] application ensures that your sales personnel are always using the most up-to-date product information, marketing collateral, and business templates, such as sales letters, contracts or quotes.

Integrations and Additive Solutions

Jeeves ERP can be extended by a number of integrations and additive solutions—some built by Jeeves; others built in partnership with leading software providers; and still others custom-built by our product experts leveraging the system’s open architecture and service builder tool. Additive application areas include:

Jeeves Product Configurator is for Jeeves ERP customers who want to automate the processes around quoting, planning, and producing multi-variant, order-unique products. Whether you have make-to-order, assemble-to-order, engineer-to-order, pick-to-order, or buy-to-order operations, Jeeves Product Configurator helps you to modularize and structure your products so that they may be configured by sales reps—or even your customers—using valid options and constraints.

Jeeves eSales presents ERP data, such as items, customers, and pricing, on the web for your customers. Product catalogs with prices and stock balances can be accessed, and when a customer creates an order on your portal, it is instantly created in your Jeeves ERP system and followed by an aknowledgement email to the customer.

The Jeeves ITC feature makes it possible for businesses with complex, geographically dispersed structures to operate as a single entity when working directly with customers. Customer and warehouse replenishment orders follow a single, automated process, making all the transaction updates required for both the selling and supplying sites.

Jeeves EDI, powered by Inobiz, is built on a general platform and can handle the identification, validation, and storage of incoming and outgoing messages automatically. The solution handles most of the recurring message types within a company's logistics workflows and contains a number of pre-built messages.

Jeeves BI is a pre-packaged business intelligence system that converts transactions within different parts of your Jeeves ERP system into searchable graphics and dashboards. With Jeeves BI, you can get an overview of all your business functions, including sales, purchasing, inventory, manufacturing and finance—and from there, you have the ability to drill down into the details to ask the next question.

The core Jeeves ERP solution is broken down into eight application areas, augmented by powerful enterprise features and extended by additive solutions and integrations. Each application area represents the feature depth you can expect from an ERP solution with a 20-year history of research and development.